Motorcycling has always been identified as a sport which carries additional risks due to the high speed and to the limited protection that clothing can provide if the rider is involved in an accident. For many years designers of motorcycle clothing have tried to balance the need of providing an adequate protection against a severe impact, which normally requires several layers of stiff padding, with the requirement of wearing a piece of clothing which is as lighter and as supple as possible.
Articles of clothing equipped or associated with inflatable protectors (commonly referred to as “airbags”) have thus been conceived. When the protection is not required the deflated chamber is thin and flexible, but in the event of an accident the chamber is inflated and thus energy from severe impacts can be absorbed. DE 3616890, U.S. Pat. No. 5,535,446, WO0069292 and EP 1668999 illustrate some examples of inflatable systems which have been proposed over the years.
These systems have mainly been envisaged for use in the road traffic environment and are typically inflated when the motorcycle impacts against another object.
The above systems may be acceptable for the road environment, but in the motorcycle racing environment, where crashes are more frequent, these systems are less effective owing to the following drawbacks:                the accident is not normally caused by the motorcycle impacting an obstacle;        the inflatable chambers are substantially large, and these carry a weight penalty due to the increased amount of fabric and larger gas cylinder;        after an accident, if it's possible, the rider normally attempts to continue riding, however in these systems, once deployed, the inflatable chambers remain exposed and can flap around the garment and this will hinder the rider.        
A solution to the above mentioned drawbacks is proposed by WO 2008/044222 that describes an air bag system specifically designed for racing use. The inflatable chamber of said system is smaller and after the deployment the rider can remove the spent chamber from the protective garment and continue riding. Even if this system is an improvement over the prior art, it cannot be considered as the best solution, because it does not solve the following drawbacks:                the inflatable chamber is still quite large such that the airbag must be folded to fit in the suit and emerge outside the suit when inflated;        the rider still has to perform an action to detach the deployed chamber and, under the pressure of the race going on, there is a strong chance that the rider will not execute this procedure correctly;        if the rider continues racing, in case of another crash, he will not have protection because the system has been removed and the inflation means only have sufficient gas capacity for a single inflation.        